


Act of Violence

by jenni3penny



Series: McAvoys 1.0 [11]
Category: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-11-06 12:43:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11036433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jenni3penny/pseuds/jenni3penny
Summary: "Someone once said to me that being a war correspondent is an act of violence against the people you love the most because they end up having to stay behind worrying about you."  Will's point of view while Mac is embedded. Borrowed Jordan from 'Studio 60' for later chapters, just because I think she and Mac would have made a great team.





	1. Chapter One

"Someone once said to me that being a war correspondent is an act of violence against the people you love the most because they end up having to stay behind worrying about you. I've had to sit and think about that a lot." - Elizabeth Neuffer, Boston Globe, killed in Iraq in 2009

 

* * *

 

 

He hears that Elizabeth Neuffer is dead within four hours of her last breath and his fingers prickle and itch to grab the phone and call MacKenzie.

Within _four_ hours. It's near indecent how quickly the news of her death travels the community.

(Because, he thinks, journalism itself is now just a cadre of gossip whores - despite their supposed combined ethics, their morals, their need to be the Greek Chorus of Political Fucking Correctness. Gossip whores who have the speed of the internet and multi-million dollar satellites at their disposal. They can move information now with more accuracy than the Mafia moving out the bodies, or even cash.)

So, he hears that Elizabeth Neuffer has died and it's the first time since he told MacKenzie to get the fuck away from him that he really, _really_ , considers simply calling her back to him.

He honestly just wants to know that she's safe, alive, breathing.

How much ego is he willing to trade for information? For the sound of her voice in his ear, honeyed and warm and accented and telling him ' _I'm fine, Will. Really, I am. Stop worrying_.'?

He wants to hold her and kiss every blessed inch of warm skin and hear that heat of her voice.

He also wants to choke the life out of her but that particular desire is waning in the face of reality and legitimate fear.

Neuffer had been killed mid-way between Baghdad and Tikrit and he'd be fucked if he knows where MacKenzie Morgan McHale is in comparison. For the first time in more than months... that terrifies him, not knowing where she is or if she's safe?

“You call Diane at the Globe?” Charlie's question is quick and half lost between them. The only reason Will knows what he actually said as they get partially separated on the sidewalk is the fact that he knows exactly which Diane the older man is referring to and that's only because he'd already half-dialed her an hour before and then chickened out.

Will sidesteps a woman who's tugging a young girl along behind her, his attention caught on the way the child is purposely dawdling along. “You and I are two of the last people Diane would wanna talk to right about now.”

“She'd know more, though.” Charlie leans their shoulders together, creating a wall between the two of them, making them inseparable. He leans comfortably into the blockade they're making and shrugs at the point Skinner is trying to make.

He knows where this is going.

He knows it's going to lead to Mac, like an old star map.

“She'd tell us to go to hell,” Will murmurs, his head turning toward his friend as they near the next crosswalk, their steps slowing in tandem, shoulders bumping, “and deservedly so.”

“Yeah.” And there was that hesitant pause, heavy with consideration and concern, weighted and clumsy before Charlie shrugs and turns his head in Will's direction. “Heard from MacKenzie McHale?”

It actually took longer than he'd expected, really. Because _he'd_ obviously already been thinking about calling her since he'd heard about Neuffer and, honestly... Charlie usually thinks of those sorts of things about two hours ahead of him.

And the older man had held out about two minutes longer than Will had figured he would.

“We don't talk.”

Skinner just snorts derisively as the both of them hover at the curb, debating traffic and both silently deciding to lazily wait for the light, “Wish you would.”

Will just stuffs his hands deep into his pockets and contemplates stepping into oncoming traffic. “Wish you'd lay off it.”

 

* * *

 

 

Charlie calls him in the middle of the night again, calls three days after Will's had his assistant send flowers to Neuffer's funeral services.

Charlie Skinner, with an eerily subdued and slowed tone, tells him that MacKenzie's been stabbed while covering a protest.

Stabbed. In the stomach. _His_ MacKenzie.

Someone put a knife or shiv or something inside her and beyond anything that she's ever done to him... he's furious. Firstly that anything should enter her body without her permission? He's fucking beside himself. Secondly that something so vicious, so coldly impersonal, so... Charlie's still fucking chattering in his ear about the protest itself and his chest is tightened up and his lungs feel like they've been Blitzkrieged. Who the fuck would want to hurt her so badly that they'd make her bleed out among strangers? She's utterly betrayed him both emotionally and physically and even he didn't want to see her in that sorta pain. Not usually anyhow. Not unless he's really wallowing in what she's done. But suddenly, as he imagines it happening (because he knows what pain looks like on her face), he forgets the tightness in his lungs because it's being rapidly replaced by the swaying urge to vomit.

“Is she all right?” Because now all he sees is the smooth expanse of her, that porcelain perfect skin absolutely shredded and bloody and he's got a mental image of his own hands covered in her blood as he tries to stop it from flowing. And he's hoping, fuck, he's praying that somebody was there for her. _Someone, please_? “Charlie! Is she fucking all right?!”

He isn't stupid. He knows that gut wounds are some of the worst.

“Green Zone, unnamed location. They're moving her out soon, though. Somewhere in Europe.”

Germany. Germany, right? Some of the best military hospitals at their disposal are in Germany. “Landstuhl?”

“Probably,” Skinner's voice sounds small and tinny over the line. “Thought you didn't care to hear about Mac anymore.”

It sounds uppity, haughty and as though Charlie thinks that he's got one up in the situation.

He thinks this is the last fucking moment in time that anyone should be haughty in regards to MacKenzie. Even him, considering. Considering getting shivved in the stomach and left to bleed out in the middle of a protest is a pretty steep price to pay for cheating on your boyfriend, even when he's the boyfriend.

( _Ex-boyfriend_ , he reminds himself, bitterly.)

“I'm not heartless, Charlie.”

There's a pause before his friend's voice softens lovingly between them. “I know you're not. Wish you two could just - ”

Sometimes, when he's aching, he wishes the two of them _just could_ too.

Will shakes his head twice, quick and jerked movements and interrupts. “Not gonna happen. Spend your wishes somewhere else.”

Charlie just give him a subtly expectant pause, holds the quiet a moment before asking the inevitable. “You wanna know?”

“Yeah, either way. But I don't want her to know that I know, Charlie.”

“Okay.” There's a tweak of pride in the other man's tone, just a hint of it.

“They're all gettin' wrecked over there, man.” Will can hear his own emotions getting the better of him as he adjusts the phone against his ear. “They're just... She shouldn't be there. It was impulsive and impetuous and - ”

“It's Mac. From what I hear... It's Mac.” Two syllables that Skinner just tosses up between them, as though the words themselves are enough explanation for her behavior. For her running away – because she _had_ run away. It was just that most people didn't necessarily realize the scope of it, or the reasoning.

They're both right, though.

It _was_ impulsive and impetuous. Stupid and dangerous and scary and what the hell had she been thinking?

And, if she felt she had no other recourse but to run, to disappear because he didn't even wanna look at her...? It _was_ quintessential Mac to dive right into a war zone.

“I know,” he murmurs agreement. “Coulda been her in that car. Neuffer's.”

Having the safety of Charlie on the other end of the line gives him the leeway to finally say it aloud, to say what he's been thinking since he heard.

“Hell, they coulda done to her what they did to Pearl," Skinner supplies quickly. 

No. No. He just can't go there.

He legitimately cannot have that mental image. “ _Jesus_ , Charlie.”

He'll have those dreams now anyhow, he doesn't doubt.

Night tremors of her blood, fucking everywhere.

He'll dream her with her throat slit, and worse. Considerably worse.

“Or worse.”

 _Jesus fucking_... “You think I don't know that?!”

“Will... call her,” Skinner implores, his voice near pleading and breathy over the line. “You haven't been the same since – listen, call her home.”

“I can't do that.” He can't. Not now, not yet, maybe not ever. “Not my place anymore.”

“You punishing her?”

He's punishing the both of them, if truth is told.

He's punishing everyone for what she's done (but not _really_ for what she's done).

Because a tinny and echoing part of him is repeating a phrase in his father's voice, over and over again, in fucking surround sound stereo in his brain...

_“Maybe you just weren't man enough for her. She had to go somewhere else.”_

She'd _had_ to go. For the both of them.

And thankful he was that she was gone.

“I didn't send her there, Charlie. That was her choice.”


	2. Chapter Two

It's months later and they're at a media conference in LA and he ends up swallowing down a gulp or five of bourbon while Charlie and Jane chat with an exec from a competing network, a woman that's easily one of the most beautiful and most sass-mouthed in the place. She elegantly and deftly out-classes Jane's cattiness with a smile and a tip of her head as she takes a sip of champagne. Will watches the silent deference Barrow repeatedly gives her throughout the bouncing conversation and he's both impressed by it and amused. Jane drives him batty at times, especially when she's being insipid or bitchy and he just enjoys watching another woman's confidence plow right over her. 

He's only met Jordan one other time that he can recall, though he's heard plenty about her. They met at a completely different conference and while half drunk and grinning as MacKenzie teased her hand between his thighs under the table. And he's sure that he probably could have one day fallen for Jordan McDeere if MacKenzie hadn't already tied herself up into his heart-strings (or they lived on the same side of the continent). But they had, a group of them, ditched out of the conference to go have drinks and appetizers at some local bistro and he'd been far too involved in enjoying the fact Mac seemed anxious to fuck his brains out rather than paying attention to one of her admittedly fantastic-catch friends.

“MacKenzie's outta the Middle East. She's coming home.” Charlie tells Jordan with confidence, as though he's the one that orchestrated McHale's safe return. Will can't blame him, there's no way he'd know that Jordan is one of five people Mac would ask to pick her up at the airport if necessary. Journalism's Prodigal Daughter returns though and Will already can't stand where this conversation is going. Because he'd been perfectly happy studying the graceful sweep of Jordan's throat and imagining his way down it before being reminded that the only reason he knows her is because _Mac_ knows her, because she and _Mac_ are friends.

Jordan catches the way he's studying her so intently and holds his glance when he lifts his head, her eyes hardening in gloss and color as she speaks to Skinner. “I practically demanded it when she called me back from the hospital. Still, nearly a year later...”

Because of course _she_ would have been the one to call her sweet 'Kenzie' up and tell her to cut the bullshit and get her pale skinny ass back home.

“None of us can tell Mac what to do,” Jane adds to the conversation, her tone sours on the words as she steps closer to Will and farther from Jordan's arched glance. “She's always been bull-headed.”

“She's been embedded for years. Shot at, stabbed, nearly blown up. Some would call that courage in the face of - ”

“It's not courage. It's cowardice.” The words taste acidic as they come out of him but he shrugs and continues onward despite it. He's earned a little bitchiness himself, he thinks. Probably right around the second or third time Mac crawled into bed with Bryan when she should have been at his side. “She hauled ass outta here and - ”

“Will," Charlie tries to intervene politely.

It's unnecessary, though. Because Jordan is already hauling him a few feet away by a pull of an arm and he tugs away from her as they end up wedged between two empty tables, the entree dishes and wine glasses abandoned and half messy.

“ _Get the fuck away from me. I don't care where you go. But rest assured you won't work in DC or New York ever again._ ” He's confused for a moment by her tone and the familiarity of the words. At least until he realizes that the drawling tone is a mockery of him and the words are an exact repetition of one of the last things he remembers directly saying to MacKenzie. “I told her to come here with me and she went into a war instead. To punish herself.”

Years later and even after all that's transpired... the idea that Mac would work in LA instead of New York or DC, even Atlanta or Chicago? LA? It's thousands of miles in the wrong direction. It makes his heart stutter a little. “I was obviously drunk when I said that.”

Jordan lets up a scornful laugh, leaning her upper body back as she shakes her head at him, as though ashamed. “I don't believe you were, Will. You can't tell someone to get the fuck away from you and then call it cowardice when they leave. That's blatant hypocrisy.”

“Listen - ”

“Listen,” she sharpens at him, a hand up and slicing the air between them as she seems to get taller in her designer heels, her features a perfect mask of strength. “If I had the ability I would give her a full hour to produce when she came back, the ' _Will McAvoy is a Smug Infantile Son of a Bitch Show_ '. We'd talk all hour about your need to be right and adored. How your compulsive need to win an argument is more important than being an empathetic human fucking being.”

It's the first time he's been in a non-Mac confrontation about the end of his own relationship wherein he thinks the other person is actually armed with some of the facts.

He has no doubt, actually, that Jordan knows what really happened.

He has absolutely no doubt that MacKenzie confessed and beat herself up to the tune of ' _Mea Culpa, Mea Culpa'_.

“Where the fuck was her empathy? For four months - ”

“Do you wanna fuck me?” she asks throatily as she leans into his space and suddenly the entire world seems to spin surreal. He's absolutely confused, confounded (and _almost_ turned on?). The words combined with the haze of her perfume are a nice pair but they just simply don't make sense in regards to the situation, to him, to their history. He squints a look over her, catches the bitter near smirk that tugs one side of her mouth and he intentionally steps back, opening his hands to spread between them.

Jordan McDeere is intrinsically smart. She's exactly the type that would walk him straight into a trap just to teach him a lesson.

She's exactly the type that would absolutely adore and be equally adored by MacKenzie.

“Right here?” Will asks sardonically, letting his glance peruse down the length of her and then back up.

She thins her glance and purses her lips up, frowning at his sarcasm. “I mean, if given the chance - ”

“No. I don't know what... no.” He lets his lungs stumble into stillness, studies her face and the way she nods at him with brightly pleased eyes. As though she knows information that he isn't privy to and... well, as though she knew the answer before he actually did. “Surprisingly? I don't.”

Jordan blinks and her smile untwists from its accusatory tightness.

Now it seems sad, maybe even kind as her shoulders lower and her head tips to an angle.

“At least when she went into Purgatory she went to another country. You just did it inside your own head,” she murmurs as she starts taking a step back. “And she's the coward?”

It smacks him still and breathless because, well, primarily because it's entirely true.

And after a stunned still moment he finally sucks down a deep breath, relaxing into the space she's now put between them. “Is she okay? I mean physically. Is she - ”

“She'll be fine.”

Will slowly nods after her interruption, exhaling from loosening lungs. “She cheated on me, Jordan.”

“Yeah, she did. I know. She told me. She's a terrible person. Boo hoo.”

He snorts at her, shaking his glance away in derisive but surprisingly patient rage. “Boo hoo?”

“You can't forgive her for telling you an ugly truth?” she asks and accuses at once. “So that you wouldn't hear it from someone else? You told her that you loved her over and over again – but you can't find it in yourself to forgive her? Your brand of love doesn't extend that far?”

He feels himself harden under the accusation. Who the fuck is she to demand specific emotions of him? To try and define what love _should_ be when coming from him? She doesn't fucking know him. He doubts she came from a household in which love was sometimes equal to a whiskey sour(ed) slap across the face so maybe she should just take a giant step back. “Not yet, no.”

“Then you don't get to call her a coward in public, not in front of me.” She's already ending the conversation and he's too emotionally bankrupt to even want to keep fighting it. It's not worth it considering Mac isn't even a part of the equation, not physically. Maybe it'd be different if she were actually there. But she's not. She's _gone_. “Kenzie's coming home and it's not gonna matter where she works, Will. She's a better journalist than you are and the world knows it now, three Peabody Awards later. She's coming home. Be prepared for that.”

Like he didn't know all of that already. Like he wasn't aware that he was just a pompous talking-head-and-hair-do in comparison to Mac McHale, the Pride and Princess of Journalism itself. “I am.”

“She's coming home and you're not gonna be the Golden Boy forever.”

He can feel his shoulders go back and harden in the same way they had the very first time he'd cracked a bottle across his father's face. “I know that. And I certainly don't need you to lecture me about love or forgiveness or anything else that isn't any of your goddamn business, McDeere.”

She lifts a flute of champagne from a passing tray and mocks a toast in his direction, her eyes glistening blue and bright as glass. “The Era of William Asshole McAvoy is over. Cheers.”

“Ladies and Gentlemen, Jordan McDeere, NBS,” he offers with a jeering tone, both hands out and open between them as she turns on him.

“Didn't realize you two knew each other that well.” Charlie's voice is welcoming and he leans into how supportive it feels in the face of Jordan's simmering vitriol.

His jaw flexes on its own, spiking an ache as he shakes his head. “We don't. She's a friend of Mac's.”

“Well...” Skinner has an utterly benign look on his face, as though nothing is out of the ordinary and life is just cherries, no pits in sight. Obviously there's alcohol involved there somewhere. “I'm a friend of yours.”

Will just snorts a disparaging laugh before turning his head and eyeing the older man, his question lifting into insecurity. “Are you? In this?”

“Sure, of course. Always have been,” his friend tells him with feigned cheeriness, a hand catching onto his arm and tugging. “Now, let's go get me ridiculously drunk.”

 

* * *

 

 

He's drunk on a hotel room balcony at a conference that she, by all rights, should be attending.

If she were _responsible_ , if she didn't run off to war zones like a lunatic, if she took her goddamn job seriously...

But, according to Jane (who heard it from Jordan), she's in London. She's visiting her parents before coming back state-side. And he very suddenly misses her parents and nearly more than he misses her. Mainly because, despite differing lifestyles, her father always seemed sorta God-like to him. Often pompous and ever opinionated, wiry and all about holding a higher standard of practicality or prudence above emotionality. But, still, a sort of unspoken deity in their lives all the same. She'd always been Daddy's Girl and once he'd met the man he couldn't manage to blame her, really.

The man had raised four daughters, one son, lived like a king and worked for the Queen...

He was only over cruel when it was absolutely called for (which had been _never_ , that Will had seen).

And he's always loved MacKenzie with an unapologetic adoration, with pride and doting and affection (is he thinking of her father or of himself?).

It hadn't ever been hard to see that if she wasn't the actual favorite, she was second in line for the distinction.

It wasn't hard to see that John McHale was a man who would _never_ hit his wife or slap his children around.

“Did you hear me? Will?”

He nods over his beer, staring down the bottle neck like its got universal answers for him, he just needs to get to the bottom. “MacKenzie's coming home.”

Charlie leans onto the railing beside him, the never-empty glass curled tightly in his hand, “I know.”

“She's visiting her parents first," he tells the night air with a little wistful escape of air from his lungs.

“What happened between you two, Will?”

It wouldn't be that hard to say out loud, would it?

He doesn't think it should be, _not with Charlie_.

But it is. It's not just hard to say, it's damn impossible. Especially with Charlie.

“On the record? I miss her more than I hate her.” He feels the spike of near-tears bite along his jaw, prickling at him so sharply that he stands straighter and leans away the balcony railing. “I'm just saying.”

For the record? In reality? He hasn't consistently slept well since she was stabbed.

“You need to call her, Will. I mean it now.”

Because he dreams of her dying, bloody, wounded.

“I can't call her. I don't think she'd answer anymore.”  
  
He dreams of her in pain, whimpering his name as he tries to stop the bleeding.  
  
(Abe's gonna have a field day with the symbolism, the irony... if he ever goes back in for an appointment.)

"Will? I think she would. Maybe she needs to hear from you."

He dreams her dead to him, because _he_ sent her away.  
  
And by morning, every morning, he wishes instead that it was him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely sure this story is finished. I had meant for it to be done here but now it seems unfinished.  
> There may be more added at some point. I'm not promising anything but... maybe.


	3. Chapter 3

He's mentally scripting a long worded rant about the deplorable state of most every ' _complimentary continental breakfast_ ' in hotels across America. He'd argue that he's going to pay for the sludge they're passing off as coffee, just by way of heartburn rather than cash. 'Complimentary' his pasty Nebraskan ass.

“Where's your girlfriend? The cute, British - ”

“We broke up.” He's said it more often than he'd like in the last few years. Which makes it pretty easy to dump into conversation as he pours his coffee, debating even using creamer or sugars. What's the point? It's not like it's going to make the coffee either better or worse.

“Idiot.”

The very public commentary on his most private life is starting to grate on his nerves.

Actually, to be entirely honest, it's starting to royally piss him off.

And the fact that Jack Rudolph's snark is probably just gonna be a follow up to Jordan's first act from the night before has his shoulders going tense and tight as he sniffs at the black coffee and sighs general disappointment from his lungs.

He just wants to be back in New York, that's all.

Los Angeles sucks for him, it always has, really.

Hell, for years. And it has, literally, been years.

And there are still people who look over his shoulder and toward the door when he walks into a room, waiting for MacKenzie to breeze in behind him. He still gets asked about her, whether she's feeling ill or if she's on assignment, or just ' _You leave Mac at home?_ '. It blows his mind, really. Because they weren't really together that long. Years, sure... years. But three, not fifty. And for a portion of those years she was completely betraying him and blankly living a lie to all of them. All of them, even Brian himself. And they still adored her ten times more?!

Physically, emotionally, crumbling loyalty up in her fingertips like wet-clumped sand and he was the Asshole?? And still... _Still_ they'd rather see him _and_ her in combination (or possibly just _her_ ) instead of dealing with him alone.

To be fair to most people, he'd been a far more affable guy when he thought MacKenzie McHale could possibly be _the_ one. When he thought maybe she loved him with just a percentage of how much he fucking adored her, how enthralled he was with just the nearness of her.

He'd been a lot easier to get along with when she _did_ breeze right through the door before him, the door he was usually holding open for her (because she liked it when he did the little things and he liked doing the little things when they were for her).

Because _some_ men were fucking gentlemen and decent, moral, goddamn civil.

“I know y'broke up, jackass,” Rudolph accuses, his voice softening as he says it though. His tone turns friendlier and sorta reverent, even as the words seem confrontational themselves. “That was dumb.”

“I'm tired of talking about it.”

And the Chairman of a television network that Will has _never_ been on, but a man he's been acquainted with for near all the years of his media career, just shrugs. He reaches over Will for a disposable coffee cup as though they're just meeting up at the local coffee shop, having a manly chat over macchiatos or some equally ridiculous shit. “We don't need to debate it, McAvoy. I'm just saying - ”

“If people knew the situation they'd be a lot more understanding.” Will breathes out tiredly.

He's not hungover but... well, he didn't sleep either. He doesn't sleep all that much anymore. He severed his relationship with 'Sleep' about the same time he severed his relationship with someone else.

“Who gives a fuck if people are understanding about _your_ break-up?” Jack continues right over him, pouring coffee from an outdated carafe and still leaving them side by side.

Their shoulders are pressed together like they're brothers, like they're frat pledges or members of the same football team and Will actually appreciates that lean of support. Because it's the first time in a long time that anyone besides Charlie has made him feel like he's justified in his decision and that he handled it like a grown and respectful man should. Even if Rudolph is blind to his reasoning, he's treating the situation like it's between two adults instead of picking teams on the playground. “It's yours, it's done. I'm just saying - it's dumb.”

“Jack - ”

“Because you were _so_ damn good together. Work and real world, the two of you fit. You fit together, then together you fit the world.” Jack Rudolph is telling that world, over a horrible cup of coffee, the single thing that Will was once so sure of, really. They are excellent together, generally. They fit perfectly. Usually. When she didn't secretly run off to fuck her ex while he was otherwise occupied. Whoops – there was always that one little stipulation, eh? “I mean... _Will_.”

“I know that, Jack. I really do.”

“You seem... Was your choice, wasn't it?” It's gentle surprise that fills the other man's voice, wonder brightening his eyes as McAvoy just shrugs up his lanky shoulders in response. He's turning a glance down the front of himself and wondering if he should have dressed a little better. It's not every day he's discussing the dramatic end of his most recent relationship with the chairmen of a competing network. For fuck's sake, the chairman of his own network couldn't give two shits about the shirt he's wearing, let alone his ex-girlfriend. He's at once thankful that Jack isn't his boss and a little saddened by the fact that nobody besides Charlie can show this much interest or concern.

But then, he tells himself, Charlie's level of loving and affection makes up for all manner of mishaps and missed opportunities. It's more than enough to make him feel a bit loved, at the least.

“Not the reasoning but... the result, yeah,” he admits. He lifts a glance toward Rudolph and sees the pinch in the other man's forehead, the saddening way his features fall just before he nods sullen and silent acceptance.

It's a beat and a breath before he chuckles quietly and stares down over his disposable cup, speaking so gently that Will is surprised by its softness. “I always figured it'd be Mac demanding a ring or kicking your ass to the curb.”

“I'd always planned to give her one, Jack.”

Truth, isn't it? Really? He'd sort of known it from the beginning, right?

That if there was a woman that would make him want to settle down – it'd be MacKenzie.

“Yeah, I know.” A surprisingly wistful look passes over Jack's face before he laughs again and lifts the cup between them. “Jordan chopped you to bits last night, huh?”

“She really didn't. We just had words.”

They're finally forced to separate, moving away from the table and coming back together as a pair as a couple other men in casual business dress headed right for the coffee. Will considered warning them away from it even as Jack kept talking. “Girl's a terrier when she bites down.”

“No shit? Probably don't wanna keep referring to her as a 'girl' with other industry professionals. I'm just sayin'.” He murmured as one of the strangers tossed a glance in their direction, his hand catching out against Rudolph's elbow and tucking them closer once again. “It's two Peabody Awards, by the way. Next time she tries to lecture me on the woman I spent three years being intimate with, she should get her fucking facts straight.”

“You mean MacKenzie?” Jack asks out of pure confusion, as though he's just barely hanging off the side of the conversation as it careens away from them.

Will just nods sharply in response at first, halfway down another swallow of coffee before he lifts the cup between them, unconsciously using it to punctuate. “I mean Jordan shouldn't give me a lecture about MacKenzie McHale's credentials when I was the one going down on her four or five nights a week. It's fucking gauche.”

The chairman just gives him a salesman-style grin, one that's all mischief and charm. “You went down on Jordan four or five nights a week while you were seeing Mac? That's more than just gauche.”

He reflexively flinches at the intimation of infidelity and has to swallow down hard on the reaction, has to remind himself that he's done his absolute best to make sure that the number of people who know what actually happened is in the single digits. Jack obviously notes the minute movement of his facial features and the response is merely an arched brow and a humphed noise of surprise. It's as though the entire story's been told in a moment and all Rudolph had to do was watch him flinch at the mere mention of infidelity.

He feels his expression sour as, once again, his imagination provides the mental footage. He seen it in his head since she told him, once the roaring in his ears stopped and silence settled in. “Fuck off, Jack.”

“Your sentence structure, man.” Rudolph waves a thin hand between them before he takes a hard swallow of coffee to recover and Will watches his features darken in response. It's not the heat that has Jack making a face as he swallows, sucking his cheeks in. It really is just truly horrible coffee. “I mean come the fuck on. You're on television.”

“Right now?” McAvoy asks drolly.

“Touche,” the other man murmurs. “There's really no fix to it?”

He just shakes his head, turning his glance away into a void as he shrugs too. “Not currently.”

“She's comin' home.”

Will nods solemnly into the other man's quiet commentary. “So I've heard.”

So he knows. Fuck, he _knows_.

These days it's all anyone has to say to him.

It's the current postscript to every goddamn day:

_MacKenzie McHale is Coming Home. Get Ready to Get Fucked. Again._

“Listen, have you ever met Erin Andrews? She asked me about you last night.”

“Never met, no. Not personally.” Will smiles as he turns his glance back in Rudolph's direction, lets it lean into a grin as he blinks and replays the question in his head, really hears it. “Wait, what? She asked?”

Jack just gives a lift of his shoulders, no big deal. “Interested?”

“Am I interested in a statuesque blonde with an impressive knowledge of professional baseball? That Erin Andrews? As in, World Series and - ”

“She thinks you seem sweet.”

His shoulders throw back slightly, both hands opening between them as he shakes his head, “Buried the fucking lead, Rudolph.”

Jack just grins in response, chucks his still half full cup into the garbage along the side of the linen covered table and nods his head toward the conference room door. “Wanna see if she's interested in brunch?”

He thinks about the beautiful blonde newscaster and shrugs, keeping his voice calm and easy-going, finding that place that is emotionally affable and charming. “I wanna see if she's interested in a week on an island somewhere.”

In reality, he thinks about Erin Andrews and then he thinks he should have long been married to MacKenzie by now...

 

* * *

 

 

There's something about the way that she laughs into kissing him that very suddenly reminds him of Mac and maybe it's the way her laughter tastes like wine, sass, and mulled happiness against his tongue as he gathers her up closer. Her long and lithe leg hooking on his hip in a way that is utterly reminiscent of another woman, the other woman. The only other woman. There's something similar but not quite right with the way she fiddles with his shirt as he sucks against her tongue and groans.

She's all legs and long blonde hair and an indelible heat that is oh-so-close but... just not right. It's just slightly off, out of phase, jilted half an inch to the left of correct. It's just off center of perfect.

There's something in his head that tells him that it's not gonna matter how many times he fucks her, he's never going to love her.

And, _Christ, McAvoy_... that's so goddamn unfair to her.

“Listen,” he interrupts the kisses with an attempt at chivalry. “I just... I'm not sure... ”

… of why he's stopping.

He not at all sure... because they're both adults and willing and able. 

And it's not as though he's betraying anyone.

It's not as though there's anyone to betray, or anyone to worry about hurting. There's nobody who deserves the courtesy of a second thought and he sucks in a sharp breath as he considers it, seeing the way Erin just gives him a confused (and cute as hell) half smile.

“Will?”

“Nothing,” he smiles and lowers his hand, palming her hip and tugging her closer. “Hit the beach?”

Beach time with Erin Andrews and probably alcohol, plenty of both.

Because MacKenzie McHale had been due on the East Coast at least an hour or two before he'd left the country.

Because she sure as shit isn't the only one that can run away when the time comes.


End file.
